MARGINALIA

Memos from a cultural omnivore and incurable note-scribbler.

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17 Oct 2011
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It’s strangely comforting when your heroes give you permission to suck at your chosen craft for a little while. It directly contradicts the message we were fed in college, which is that basically any and all of us were ready to (and, implicitly, supposed to) go start changing the world, founding multimillion dollar companies, saving Africa, shooting to the top of our fields the instant we were sprung from the dorms. According to this narrative, there’s no room to flounder or dabble or take your time to work out the kinks, which I’ve noticed leaves a lot of (still high-achieving) twenty-somethings in my acquaintance feeling like they’ve accidentally welched on a bet. Or been welched on.  So thank you, Ira, for the more realistic advice. We’ll do our best.
1 Jul 2011
4,252 notes
Life goal. obliteratedheart: Inaccessible Stairwell Turns into Awesome Bookshelf
28 Jun 2011
124 notes
I’ve been overthinking things lately, which tends to keep me from DOING anything. I think this is going to be my mantra for the month of July…
27 Jun 2011
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andrewharlow: Stencil portraits by Kris Trappeniers
11 Jun 2011
1,565 notes
8 Jun 2011
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I went on vacation and offline for a week, and it was amazing. Now I’m back to cubicles, Twitter, daily makeup application and midtown. On the other hand, I’m back to New York in the summer— popsicles on the High Line, runs along the Hudson and midnight walks in the Village included. Could be worse.

**photo credit goes to the delightful and talented Sarah Erickson.

7 Jun 2011
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In an attempt to distract myself from the feeling that I’m being pinched constantly all over my right side, I just spent a half hour comparing these rejected covers to the ones that were later chosen. I think I prefer the rejected covers for Migraine, Blood Bones and Butter, and even Wetlands, though I find this Wetlands cover kind of disturbing. I love this version of the Heft cover, but I think the final one looks a little more serious-fiction-about-serious-post-post-modern-anxiety, no? youmightfindyourself: Book Covers That Got Away For authors, choosing a book cover is the fraught moment their very private creation starts putting on its game face and getting ready to enter the market. For cover designers, it can also be the beginning of their own struggle on behalf of their favorite ideas. A proposed cover can be killed for any number of reasons. It’s too dark. It’s too light. (White covers don’t look good on Amazon.) It looks too much like Y.A. fiction. It won’t appeal to men. And the death blow can come from any direction: not just from then author and the agent, but from the publisher, the in-house sales force or buyers for the major retailers, who have been known to reduce the size of an order unless a cover is changed. Designers can generate as many as 50 covers for high-profile books, though a half-dozen or so is more typical. Below are some killed covers whose creators couldn’t quite let them rest in peace. (Editor’s note: That Charlotte Roche cover for Wetlands is way better than what they ended up with. Designing a book cover is on my bucket list.)
25 May 2011
110 notes
This will be me in exactly 5 days. andrewharlow: by Helen Korpak
24 May 2011
194 notes

Reprised: Cereal Rapture

I had forgotten all about this post, but someone linked to it on Facebook and it seems particularly apt today, now that the New York Times is running articles on the latest people who think the world is ending tomorrow and the trouble they’re having getting their kids to make their beds. If my mom was telling me the world was ending tomorrow, I wouldn’t make my bed either. I WOULD, however, hang onto my cereal.
20 May 2011
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I have angered the immunity gods

and, lo, they have given me…

Shingles.

Yup. The chicken-pox-type plague that old people get. I’m flattered to be asked to the party early (like fifty YEARS early) but I have to say I’m not enjoying watching my right side turn into one big blister.

I told my mother in a voicemail, and, ten minutes later, received this text message:

“J, I’m on the tenniscourts.
Sorry about your shingles.
Something to blog about?
Call you when I’m done.”

It’s been 24 hours and I just stopped laughing.

So here you go, Mom. A post about my shingles. Now I have to go rest up so I’m better in time for my trip home next week— I’m gonna kick your butt on the tenniscourts.

20 May 2011
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19 May 2011
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